So with me shall my friends watch upon the mountain and share both the surprise and the wonder of this surpassing discovery. My own feelings are scarcely to be declared. The night promised to justify me beyond all hope; and yet, until I could witness the thing for myself, justification lay as far off as ever. Indeed, our position was perilous beyond all words to tell. There, not fifty paces from us, the sentries lounged in talk, revolvers in their belts, and rifles about their shoulders. A sigh might have betrayed us. We did not dare to exchange a monosyllable or lift a hand. Cramped almost beyond endurance, I, myself, would have withdrawn and gone down to the house again but for the immovable Okyada, who lay as a stone upon the path, and by his very stillness betrayed some subtler purpose. To him it had occurred that the sentries would go upon their patrol presently. I knew that it might be so, had thought of it myself; but a full twenty minutes passed before they gave us a sign, and then hardly the sign I looked for. One of them, rousing himself lazily, entered the cave and became lost to our view. The other, slinging his rifle about his shoulders, came deliberately towards us, stealthily, furtively, for all the world as though he were fully aware of our presence and about to make it known. This, be it said, was but an idea of my awakened imagination. Whatever had been designed against us by the master of the Villa San Jorge, an open assault upon the mountain side certainly had not been contemplated. The watchman must, in plain truth, have been about to visit the ladder’s head to ascertain if all were well with his comrade there. Such a journey he did not complete. The Jap sprang upon him suddenly, at the very moment he threatened almost to tread upon us, and he fell without a single word at my feet as though stricken by some fell disease which forbade him to move a limb or utter a single cry. Okyada had caught him with one arm about his throat and a clever hand behind his knees. As he lay prone upon the rock, he was gagged and bound with a speed and dexterity I have never seen imitated. Fear, it may be, was my servant’s ally. The wretched man’s eyes seemed to start almost out of his head when he found himself thus outwitted, an arm of iron choking him, and lithe limbs of incomparable strength roping his body as with bonds of steel. Certainly, he made no visible effort of resistance, rather consenting to his predicament than fighting against it; and no sooner was the last knot of the cord tied than Okyada sprang up and pointed dramatically to the open door no longer watched by sentries. To gain this was the work of a moment. I drew my revolver, and, crossing the open space, looked down deliberately into the pit. The story of the Villa San Jorge lay at my feet. General Fordibras, I said, had no longer a secret to conceal from me.